[Source: PSS vol. 44]

...you see: before us stands the task that the state become a wholesale merchant or learn to conduct wholesale trade—a commercial task, a trading task—and this seems extraordinarily strange to some, and extraordinarily frightening to others. "If, they say, the communists have come to the point where trading tasks are now being put on the agenda—ordinary, simplest, most vulgar, most petty trading tasks—then what can possibly remain of communism? Should we not, by this occasion, finally fall into despair and declare: well, all is lost!" Such moods, I think, if one looks around oneself, can be detected, and they are extraordinarily dangerous, because these moods, should they gain wide currency, would serve only to obscure the vision of many, to hinder sober understanding of our immediate tasks. To conceal from ourselves, from the working class, from the masses that in the economic sphere both in spring 1921 and now in autumn-winter 1921-1922 we are still continuing our retreat—this would mean condemning ourselves to complete unconsciousness, this would mean lacking the courage to look directly at the situation that has arisen. Under such conditions, work and struggle would be impossible.

If an army, convinced that it is incapable of taking a fortress by storm, were to say that it does not agree to abandon its old positions, will not occupy new ones, will not transition to new methods of solving the task—of such an army one would say: he who has learned to advance and has not learned, under certain difficult conditions, adapting to them, to retreat, will not end the war victoriously. There have been no wars in universal history that began and ended with continuous victorious advance, or if they have, they were exceptions. And this—if one speaks of ordinary wars. But in such a war, when the fate of an entire class is being decided, when the question is resolved: socialism or capitalism—are there rational grounds for supposing that a people, deciding this task for the first time, can find at once the sole correct, infallible method? What grounds are there for supposing this? None!

Experience says the opposite. There was not one task among those we have solved that did not require us to undertake its solution again. Having suffered a defeat, to try again a second time, to redo everything, to convince ourselves of how one can approach the solution of a task—not toward a finally correct solution, but toward a solution that is at least satisfactory—that is how we have worked, and that is how we must continue to work. If, given the perspective that opens before us, there were a lack of unanimity in our ranks, this would be the most sad sign that an extraordinarily dangerous spirit of despair had taken root in the party. And, conversely, if we do not fear to speak even bitter and difficult truth plainly, we shall learn—necessarily and unconditionally learn—to overcome all and every difficulty.

We must stand on the ground of existing capitalist relations. Shall we take fright at this task? Or shall we say that this is not a communist task? This would mean not understanding revolutionary struggle, not understanding the character of this struggle—the most tense and connected with the sharpest transformations, which we cannot brush aside in any way whatsoever.

I shall now draw certain conclusions.

I shall touch upon a question that concerns many. If we are now, in autumn and winter 1921, making yet another retreat, then when will these retreats end? Such a question we hear directly or not quite directly not infrequently. But this question reminds me of a similar kind of question in the epoch of the Brest Peace. When we concluded the Brest Peace, we were asked: "If you have made concessions to German imperialism such and such, then when will concessions end and where is the guarantee that these concessions will end? And in making them, are you not increasing the dangers of your position?" Of course, we are increasing the danger of our position, but one must not forget the fundamental laws of any war. The element of war is danger. In war there is not a single moment when you are not surrounded by dangers. And what is the dictatorship of the proletariat? It is a war, and a far more cruel—

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